The StarCraft II Legacy of the Void Beta is on the way, and with only two weeks left until its launch we wanted to take a look at the goals and expectations around the multiplayer beta. As you are likely aware, we’ve been trying to be as open as possible with the status of our development, and strongly believe that the increased cooperation between developers and players is beneficial to StarCraft II. To be clear, our goal for this expansion is to work together with all of you to make Legacy of the Void as awesome as possible.

The Lurker has returned. The Lurker is a Tier 2 unit which morphs from the Hydralisk.

The Ravager is a new unit which morphs off of the Roach.

So you guys are giving the Mutalisk something to morph into, right?

RIGHT???

Seems unlikely unfortunately. Didn't heard anything related to the Mutalisk morphing into anything else from the news I saw there and there over time.

In other news, ill have to consider some future LotV version of my Micro and Tactics SC2 map. Probably won't be able convert from HotS to LotV without so many unit changes that it breaks HotS-based scenarios.

Although it also depends if non-LotV players will have access to the LotV Arcade right or soon after LotV's release. That's something I don't know about and it can force me to just keep a HotS-only version.

I'm endlessly amused that the mutalisk still does not actually mutate into anything anymore.

I can get what they're going at with increasing the starting worker count, I can understand why they'd want to speed up the early game, but I feel like trying to force micro on players has a strong potential to backfire. Very happy to see the Lurker back in the main game, but none of the other new units really seem too exciting to me. The Adept in particular, I don't understand how having a unit half-way between a Zealot and a Stalker would be remotely useful.

I like the Carrier's Release Interceptors ability though, that seems like it'd be handy. At the very least, that's an option I always wanted to play with in an SC1 scenario (having the player be endlessly mobbed by swarms of cheap, free range Interceptors).

Hercanic wrote:I'm not following the game's development too closely. What's this about buttons and worker count?

In a nutshell - They want you to be pushing more buttons that do AoE damage because "it adds micro" while they want to get rid of early game because "it doesn't do anything" as opposed to re-introducing build orders or something.

Hercanic wrote:I'm not following the game's development too closely. What's this about buttons and worker count?

In a nutshell - They want you to be pushing more buttons that do AoE damage because "it adds micro" while they want to get rid of early game because "it doesn't do anything" as opposed to re-introducing build orders or something.

Yeah, I admit that the early game in SC2 had the problem that it has always the 1 or 2 most optimal build order as opposed to SC1 where it was much more diversified.

Or it felt like that to me.

Also SC2 forcing much smaller maps does kill a lot of potential for more game styles and tries too much to force quick games.

Quick games you say? I have noticed that in Warthunder (a russian airwar game :x) too. Games are purposefully shortened and stripped of indepth gameplay, jet bombers can end games in literally under 3 minutes. Is stupidly short games a new meme in the industry?

Yes, cutting the mineral count in half for half the mineral fields is exactly what this game fucking needs.

Yes, after years of nerfing early-game strats to the point where there is only one correct way to play it out, it's going to be stale. Yet instead of trying to put some thought into undoing that problem, they opt to remove the early game entirely! FUCKING BRILLIANT. Say goodbye to your 9pools, your BBS, and your proxy gates, FOREVER, assuming this change makes its way to retail. Which it probably will, because it's already made it into beta.

Why the fuck after 3 whole expansions does the Mutalisk STILL NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO MORPH INTO? This game has fucking 250 HP missile turrets that do full damage to them, SINCE THE FIRST GAME, and they apparently think Mutalisks are still too powerful to have a morph?

Why are they so HELLBENT on pushing the mass expansion paradigm? Do they not fucking know that Starbow tried to do this exact same thing? It just makes gameplay WORSE. You expand so much that you end up having too many bases to defend, and the game slows down to a CRAWL. You'd have 4-5 fucking bases, all saturated, by the 12 minute mark. Is that really what Blizzard wants to happen with this game?

You want a formula that works? Look at Brood War. Notice how Zerg is the only race with that many fucking bases, and they're undersaturated too. 4-5 undersaturated vs 2-3 saturated for Terran/Protoss. Zerg could do that because they had the mobility to defend them all. Zerg NEEDED to do that, because their unit composition depends on quantity over quality.

Now in SC2, they want EVERY RACE to play like Zerg. It's not going to fucking work. Watch as the first week of beta has people expanding, turtling, and doing NOTHING ELSE. I guarantee you that is what will happen. I will suck my own dick if I'm wrong.

These people are just throwing darts at random, and most of these darts don't even hit the fucking board.

I apologize in advance for anyone that contracts butthurt by reading this post. I am just super mega done right now.

Lol, no one on their staff even knows Brood War is a Blizzard game. I still remember their lead producer just casually saying 3 Templar make an Archon, and Browder saying he "watched videos" about it. And people wonder why Lords of Game Testing was so bad...

Apparently Blizzard desperately tried to emulate Red Alert 3 and DOTA gameplay mechanics, what's with all the arbitrary button abilities and macro-hard bullshit? Might as well add in control points because pumping workers is too hard for the people in the same thread who thinks all the new spells is too "high level" and "competitive".

KnoutOut wrote:Quick games you say? I have noticed that in Warthunder (a russian airwar game :x) too. Games are purposefully shortened and stripped of indepth gameplay, jet bombers can end games in literally under 3 minutes. Is stupidly short games a new meme in the industry?

The original Brood War is extremely fast-paced, maybe even more-so than SC2. People have complained SC2 have glass units and fights end in seconds, but the truth is that Brood War battles are resolved even faster and more brutal, the difference is that Brood War is responsive and readable enough that the pacing is fairly manageable, SC2 in the other hand is the complete opposite.